Chapter Nine of 'Wolf in the Making'- As Easy As That
Chapter Eight.
Title: Wolf in the Making (9/9)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash, heading towards slash
Warnings: Profanity, angst, slavery, dark!Draco, violence, torture, non-major character death.
Rating: R
Summary: Sequel to “The Mark of the Fox.” As Harry and Draco plan to take down the man who betrayed both of them, Harry struggles against the slavery that Draco’s Mark imposes on him and Draco struggles to make Harry submit to him. Neither struggle is going to turn out as they expected.
Author’s Notes: As noted above, this is the second in what I’m calling my Fox and Wolf series, which will eventually be four stories. This follows “The Mark of the Fox,” and you really should read it first or you won’t know what’s going on in this one. This particular fic will be either eight or nine parts long; I’m not sure yet.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Wolf in the Making. There will be two sequels, “Loup-garou” and “Shapeshifter’s Soul,” but I don’t know when they’ll be posted.
Chapter Nine-As Easy As That
Harry heard his door open as he pulled his shirt over his head, and ignored it, assuming that one of the Marked ones had come to visit him. “What, did you want to wish me good luck, Lisa?” he muttered. “I don’t think I need it.”
“Were you expecting someone else, then? Should I be jealous?”
Harry reeled around and nearly fell. Malfoy was striding towards him, his smile wide and bright, his hands reaching out as if he couldn’t wait to touch Harry’s skin even though several feet still separated them. Harry hastily fumbled for the shirt and dragged it over his head, but by the time he did that, Malfoy was right next to him, hands running up and down his chest, breath hot in his ear. Harry, the shirt tangled around his arms and the arms held up in a position that ached and probably looked stupid both at once, gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the way the hand competed with Malfoy’s breath for heat.
“No need to dress on my account,” Malfoy whispered to him. “If you had any idea how wonderful you look to me in any condition-”
“Unless you want to see what I look like bloody and possibly missing a leg,” Harry snapped, trying to wriggle away, “then you need to let me sleep. I shouldn’t be taking on the wards in the Ministry and Robards’s office with less than a full night’s rest.”
“It’s only ten,” Malfoy said, as if he took Harry’s argument seriously, and the shirt was gone. Malfoy spun Harry to face him. Harry had only the chance to see that Malfoy’s eyes were darker than normal before he leaned in and kissed Harry.
Salt and musk in his mouth, and Malfoy’s tongue pushed his own out of the way with ease, then darted back to allow Harry to chase it. Harry hissed and stood there, caught between cooperating so that Malfoy wouldn’t be too upset and following his natural inclination so that Malfoy wouldn’t be too suspicious.
Then he didn’t get a choice, because Malfoy abruptly seized him and maneuvered him closer, while prying Harry’s lips apart with his own. Now Harry couldn’t breathe, unless he wanted to breathe in Malfoy spit.
He thrashed, half-panicked, and Malfoy laughed and let him go. Harry only had a moment to lie on the bed before Malfoy joined him, bending his head to fasten his mouth around Harry’s right nipple.
He sucked, and once again Harry felt the stupid pleasure that he should have known about before this, if it was real. He lifted his hands and got one on Malfoy’s forehead and one on his hair, pushing him away.
Malfoy tightened his teeth, and Harry understood the warning. If he pushed Malfoy away before he was ready to go, then he might injure himself. And if his nipples really were that sensitive and Malfoy wasn’t using a spell, then it would be an inconvenience and a distraction during the time when he needed to be most focused.
Harry closed his eyes and permitted it, trying to think of something else. Ridiculously, all that came to mind was some saying he’d once heard in the Muggle world, about lying back and thinking of England.
But it was so difficult, when Malfoy’s tongue kept stabbing and his teeth kept grinding and Harry’s body kept feeling things that no one had ever told him about. The Aurors were taught many things, but not how to resist your enemy trying to seduce you. As far as Harry knew, it wasn’t thought the situation would ever come up. Most Dark wizards were going to kill you or let you escape long before then.
Harry had tried to escape-tried as hard as he could. And it hadn’t been enough.
Malfoy lifted his mouth, and Harry hoped that would be all for this evening, but instead, Malfoy leaned over and sucked a certain part of his neck, right under his chin. Harry cried out in startled pleasure, and even if he hadn’t wanted to push Malfoy away, his hands would have flailed into nothingness. He hadn’t known that spot existed, either.
Why was it up to Malfoy to discover all these things about him?
Humiliated, especially when he felt Malfoy’s chuckle vibrate around the mouthful of flesh, Harry closed his eyes and lay still. He could do this. He would think about Robards and how wonderful it would be to see him humiliated and defeated at last. He would think about-
Malfoy’s hand was on his chest, pressing down almost hard enough to crack his sternum. Harry opened his eyes in time to see Malfoy lift a leg over Harry’s hips and settle down with a groan, straddling him.
Malfoy rubbed back and forth slowly, arse against Harry’s groin, his smile lazy and steady and wicked. He made Harry-Harry didn’t have a choice-think about being inside him, think about the tight grip of a man around his cock. Harry groaned and panted and sounded like a shameless idiot in his own ears.
“This much can be yours,” Malfoy whispered. “Not control over me, not the kind of romance that you’re probably expecting, but something richer than that, deeper than that. Imagine the pleasure, Potter, if you dare. Imagine the gifts that I’ll shower on you as my accepted lover. I harvest the magic, and I turn it into money, and then I often simply invest the money in my next projects. But I have enough to give you anything you want.”
Harry reached far down, deep down, into the sea of his mind where his conscience lived, and whispered, “You can’t give me back my self-respect.”
Malfoy stopped moving and stared at him.
“Yes,” Harry said, and his voice was stronger, thank God, even if his hands weren’t strong enough to shove Malfoy off him yet, “I’d lose my self-respect sleeping with a criminal who doesn’t even use his money and power for anything. What kind of ambitions do you have, Malfoy? You’re draining magic from people, sure, and setting up more places to do it, but then what do you do with that power? You’re not trying to take over the wizarding world. You’re not eliminating your enemies. The only reason that you’re trying to kill Robards is because he betrayed you, not in the service of some greater plan.” He managed to grin at Malfoy squatting above him. “You have the smallest dreams of any Dark Lord that I’ve ever heard about.”
“I’m not a Dark Lord,” Malfoy said, but both his expression and his voice were wooden.
“That’s what I mean,” Harry said. “Dark Lords-Voldemort, Grindelwald-they need something more than what you have.” He leaned up and closer to Malfoy, although that made Malfoy’s arse rub against him so deliciously that he nearly wanted to lie back down and rut himself into oblivion. “Ambition.”
Malfoy pressed a hand into the middle of Harry’s sternum again and leaned down. “I was Sorted into the House of ambition,” he said, voice hard. “It seems disingenuous of you to forget that, Potter.”
“Sorted into the House,” Harry said, “only means the Hat recognized the potential for ambition in you. It doesn’t mean you’ll have it.”
Malfoy turned his back abruptly, clambering away from Harry. Harry sat up, blinking, and touched his cock to somewhat relieve the sudden warmth and pressure gone from it. He saw Malfoy striding towards the door with jerky motions that told Harry he was also erect. He pulled open the door and turned to level a poisonous glare in Harry’s direction.
“At least I wasn’t wasting my days as a mere Auror, when I could have been Head,” he said, “and drowning in guilt for things that weren’t my fault.”
Harry smiled, because those words no long affected him the way they once had. He knew that Malfoy didn’t care about the state of Harry’s conscience one way or the other; why should he, when it was an obstacle preventing him from seducing Harry? He would only speak those words because he could use them to twist Harry aside from his true purpose.
“It’s true that I would never have been anything more than an ordinary Auror,” Harry said. “But I never had pretensions of more, the way you did.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or should that be pretenses?”
Malfoy slammed Harry’s door spitefully on the way out, but that didn’t matter, since Harry hadn’t been asleep, and this was the last night he would spend here. He lay down, smiling despite the ache in his nipples and cock, and fell asleep quickly enough.
*
Draco spent the rest of the night pacing and swearing, and occasionally throwing something at the wall. His agitated thoughts, shooting through the Mark, were strong enough to summon Lisa, but Draco sent her away again. There was no one who could alleviate this surge of feeling in him-
Except Potter. Draco needed to see his eyes dazzled with admiration, needed to see them glowing with surrender as he arched beneath Draco, pierced by Draco’s cock.
There was no way that Potter’s words should have been able to affect him like that, except that Draco did intend to be more than he was someday, and he hadn’t yet seen his path clear to achieving that. He had contented himself with small ambitions so far. Spreading his network of influence with the Marks. Finding and enslaving people with special talents. Creating new valleys.
Fucking Potter.
He should have a greater ambition than that, something lifelong. He had acknowledged that before this, and he had acknowledged it now that Potter’s words had bitten into him like acid. Something that would make him the equal of the Dark Lords without courting their fall.
But become great enough and the wizarding world will aim to tear you down. Even their hero couldn’t escape that fate. They depended on him to be perfect, depended on him to be their moral compass, and they couldn’t accept it when he made a mistake. Is that the way I want to end?
Draco’s mouth firmed. No. He had seen what happened to those who courted the crowd, both from a distance with Potter and intimately with his parents, who had gambled all on becoming popular again with the press and the Ministry-and lost. That had been one reason Draco had been content to remain small and obscure for so long. They couldn’t destroy him if they didn’t know about him.
But now Potter had flung a burning brand in his face, and Draco knew that Potter wouldn’t consent to stay with someone who was lesser than he was, who had fewer ambitions. Draco’s only way to Potter’s heart was to earn his admiration, because he wasn’t going to change his morals or his methods to become a person Potter would like.
Draco knew one way to begin, something he had been planning to do anyway. And so he smiled at last, and was able to stop pacing the room an hour before sunrise, and lie down in his bed, even if it was considerably emptier and colder than he had planned on earlier.
This will work, he thought as his eyes drifted shut. There’s no reason that it shouldn’t, and no reason for me to believe I’ll forever lose with him. Those who think they’ll lose, often do.
*
Everything had worked as Malfoy had said it would. Everything.
Harry was now warier than he had been of Mina Johnson and Lisa and Victor, who could set off a potion from a distance and walk into the Ministry setting off no traps and alarms, respectively, despite the Marks on their arms. They had brought back a curl of hair from Robards’s head, which Johnson frowned at before she dipped it into her potion. The potion turned purple and smoked, and then smelled horrible, like burning hair.
When she smashed the vial on the ground and nodded impressively to them, Harry had been prepared to laugh, but Malfoy gave a cold smile and sent Thalia and Hurston into motion. They acted together without hesitation, Harry thought, and that proved that they’d been slaves for so long they couldn’t conceive of any freedom. They were happy and proud to serve Malfoy, as if he was somehow naturally their master.
Harry stood upright beside Malfoy, and concentrated on concealing the fear that flooded him when the Dementors emerged from their hiding places to attack the Ministry. It gave him practice at hiding his contempt for the others, too.
Then they were inside, Apparating directly to Robards’s office. They would have Apparated into it, but Malfoy was wary of the wards that might explode when they did that, and Harry couldn’t blame him.
It was overwhelming to be inside the Ministry again, the familiar walls around him, the familiar hum of magic caressing his skin. Harry licked his lips and tried not to think about the complementary buzzing of the bracelet in his pocket. He needed to focus his attention on peeling the wards back.
“This one first,” Malfoy said into his ear, as if they were a pair of thieves who had been working together for years.
Harry nodded, and sent a burst of power through the wood. And then there was another, and another, and another, and Malfoy was beside him, sometimes using his own power, sometimes directing Harry to use his, his voice more neutral than Harry had ever heard it, his focus perfect.
It made Harry think, for a moment, of what could have happened had Malfoy remained no worse than tarnished and become an Auror. Perhaps Harry’s partner-
Harry strangled the thought. It was an ugly one, a wrong one, a stillborn child that ought to be buried.
“He’ll guess we’re coming, of course,” he said out of the corner of his mouth to Malfoy, who chuckled richly.
“Of course,” he said. “But he won’t know exactly who it is. And if I were him, I’d be conserving my strength, waiting to find out what kind of enemies I’m facing rather than raising ward after ward-especially when he realizes the effect of Mina’s potions and that he can’t escape by trying.”
Harry nodded, and went back to destroying the defenses. Sometimes he needed Dark magic, sometimes normal. He could feel Malfoy studying him with delight each time he deployed Dark magic, even pressing his body against Harry’s, as if he assumed that the mere touch of his skin would drive Harry mad with hunger and make him try to take Malfoy right in the middle of the floor.
Well, he’s got me thinking like him, at least, Harry thought, as he dropped the last ward. He stepped back and nodded to Malfoy.
Malfoy pushed the door open, and a starburst of green light came towards them. Harry moved without thought, stepping into it and whipping up a shield of his own in front of him, which gripped the green light and crushed it.
When the light faded, he saw Robards staring at him with a pale face, which grew paler still when he spotted Malfoy over Harry’s shoulder.
“Who’s been a bad boy, then?” Malfoy crooned, and stretched his hand out in a beckoning motion, fingers stiff as if he were hooking them through handles.
Robards went to his knees, screaming. Harry followed Malfoy into the room, his heartbeat blinding him, his hand falling to finger the bracelet in his pocket. He would need to move fast when he moved.
*
This close to, especially in comparison with Potter, Gawain was not impressive. Of course, Draco had Marked him in the first place for his contacts and his power inside the Ministry, not his magical strength or his beauty. He looked at others for the advantages they would offer him, not the ability they had to grace his bed.
And once I have Potter, I need not look in other directions for a bed partner.
Gawain knelt, shivering, in the middle of the floor. Draco had sent only a brief jolt of red-hot pain through the Mark, but it seemed it had caught him unprepared. He really must have believed Potter dead, Draco thought as he prowled around his recalcitrant slave in a circle, and perhaps even Draco, since Draco had not used the Mark to punish or contact him since Potter had arrived in the Valley. He had thought he was free.
His eyes were wide, his mouth wide open, a string of drool hanging from his chin. Draco reached out and touched him there, tilting his jaw gently shut.
“You have Potter to thank that I won’t torture you,” he whispered to Gawain. “He couldn’t bear the thought, and it’s true that it would take more time than is strictly necessary. I am going to tear you apart instead. Draw your limbs living from your body, and keep your heart beating until your head separates from your torso. After that, alas, even the Mark has limits.” He smiled, because Gawain had always been terrified of his smiles. “Can you even imagine how much that’s going to hurt?”
“Wait,” Potter said suddenly.
Draco turned to him, sighing. Potter looked with wide eyes at Draco, as innocent as a child who knew nothing about Marks and Dark wizards. “Yes?” Draco asked, drawing the word out. “It will not last long, I assure you.”
Potter’s body tensed, and the air around him wavered as with heat haze. Draco knew he was drawing in his magic, but that didn’t matter. He could use the Mark if necessary to stop Potter, and in the meantime it was as pleasant to stand next to him as it was to one of his observation lenses.
“He must die,” Draco said. “Painfully. But if you would prefer to kill him, and to use some different spell, then I understand.” He stepped gracefully back from Gawain. “Perhaps you can use one of those you slay Dark wizards with. You have more than enough hatred for this man to do it, I think.”
Potter was still, his eyes locked on Robards’s face. Robards let out a tiny whimper that he must have thought would evoke pity from Potter, but Draco knew otherwise. Potter was a predator, and this sound would bring his instincts surging to the fore.
“I offer you the choice,” Draco whispered. “Kill him, if you dare.”
Either Potter would yield and therefore fall closer to the “corruption” that Draco knew he feared, or he would refuse and Draco would get to kill the traitor the way he wanted to. Either way, he won.
*
Harry turned at bay before his anger.
He had felt close to Malfoy in the moments when they worked on the wards together. That was probably the reason he felt this way now. He had been more vulnerable. He had allowed himself to feel something like admiration for Malfoy, something like longing. He had thought things could be different.
And then Malfoy proved they couldn’t be, by handing a “gift” to Harry that was poisoned all the way through, and which he probably thought Harry wouldn’t recognize.
I’m not so caught up in my moral dilemmas that I can’t recognize when someone else causes them, Harry thought, and he lifted his eyes to Malfoy’s face. Malfoy was studying him with a contented expression, one lip twitching as though he was trying to suppress a smile. Harry’s anger howled through his head in a whirlwind, and he registered that Malfoy didn’t have his wand out.
Of course not. He had intended to kill Robards with the Mark.
Harry had his wand out, still, from working on the wards. With obsidian hatred gripping his heart, sinking claws into the flesh of his stomach and tearing, he pointed his wand at Malfoy and cried, “Crucio!”
The pain took Malfoy in the bowels and made him jerk like a hooked fish. He fell to the ground, shuddering, crying, his hands cleaving the air. Harry sneered down at him, and took a step forwards so that he could watch the expressions on his face better. He wanted to see the agony there, the closest Malfoy would ever come to experiencing the agony that he put others through with his Mark and his choices and his gifts and his favors.
Malfoy’s face was white. His eyes were rolling back and forth as if they would turn to jelly and melt down his cheeks. His hands were twitching in a way that Harry only seen when someone was hit by lightning. His voice was tearing itself to pieces.
The satisfaction lay in Harry’s stomach like a full meal.
And then he turned at a sound from the side and saw Robards making his way back to his feet, though he froze when he saw Harry looking at him.
In his face, Harry saw the reflection of who he was, what he had become by using the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy, what Malfoy had made him into.
Harry whirled around again, lifted the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy, and cast a curse that he didn’t know the formal name for on Robards in the same moment. It snapped his back and then snapped his ribs and drove the splintered sides into his lungs, piercing them in multiple places, drowning him in his own blood. It would kill him quickly, and that was all Harry cared about right now.
Robards was dying. Malfoy was still shaking from the aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse and wouldn’t immediately recover to take revenge on him. (Harry would have killed him, but he didn’t know what the effect on the Marked ones would be). Harry grabbed the bracelet and pushed the jade pieces down into the silver while thinking intently of the spell he wanted to use, the way Malfoy had taught him.
The bracelet flared, a dazzling silver glow that might have shocked Harry into dropping it if he wasn’t prepared for it from the practice he and Malfoy had done. Harry grabbed one of the buttons on his new shirt, Malfoy’s gift, and twisted it. It came free. Harry held it near the bracelet and his wand and murmured, “Portus.”
The stored magic began to flow into the button at the same moment as pain came welling up from the Mark.
Harry dropped to one knee and bowed his head. He had attacked through the Cruciatus once, when the wizard he’d been hunting was stupid enough to turn his back on Harry. Malfoy couldn’t cause pain that intense, and he only had to endure for a few moments, just a few, until the magic completed its transfer. Harry had used it all.
Malfoy didn’t cause pain as intense as the Cruciatus. Instead, it was worse, and Harry’s bones shuddered and felt as if they were parting company with his flesh. His joints were cracking. His voice was frozen in his chest.
But he had cast the spell, and he was clutching the button close. That was all that mattered.
Malfoy dragged himself to his feet behind Harry, if the limping and stumbling noises were any indication. He came closer and closer, but he didn’t touch him yet. That was good, Harry thought, and knew the pain he was experiencing right now would live in his mind in nightmares, for years.
“I’ll break you down,” Malfoy whispered. “I won’t do to you what I tried to do to Gawain for his betrayal, because I think that you should suffer more, and I own you in a way that I didn’t own him. I’ll have you crawling at my feet and begging for me to touch you.” He paused. “The pain isn’t subduing you.”
And the pain melted into pleasure, all the stronger because of the contrast with what had gone before. Harry wailed aloud. He could have had six orgasms joined back to back, filling him with their blinding golden pleasure, and it would have been nothing compared to this.
He would remember this forever, too.
“I’m the only one who can do this for you,” Malfoy whispered. “I want you to remember that. I want you to remember that you’ll never feel this at anyone else’s hand. Anyone else in your bed won’t satisfy you. You need me.”
The stored magic ran out, and the bracelet clanged to the floor, empty.
At the same moment, Harry’s button, now a Portkey with enough energy to span the distance between continents, whirled him away and to Australia, to Ron and Hermione’s house.
The pleasure stopped at once. Harry clung to consciousness grimly as he went through the transition, and only released it once he felt a sturdy floor beneath him and heard Hermione’s echoing scream.
*
Draco stood where he had been when Harry vanished, eyes locked to that place for long seconds. He had known what was happening the moment the colors manifested, but he had not wanted to admit it.
Harry had tricked him. Draco had thought for certain Harry was using the stored magic to power up a spell that would kill Draco or himself. And instead, he had simply used it for a means of escape, and the pain spell as a distraction, which Draco had never anticipated.
Draco glanced at the dead Robards and nodded once. It was good that Harry had killed him. For one thing, anyone looking for traces of the magic in here would probably recognize Harry’s power, and that would render him outcast and outlaw-if anyone believed he was still alive.
For another, Draco had a good idea, now, of how Dark Harry was, how strong, how fast. Draco had never seen anything like the deployment of two powerful spells, one an Unforgivable, in the single second Harry had cast them.
How much worth pursuing.
Draco walked calmly out of the building to rejoin his Marked ones where they waited. He was already walking better; the Cruciatus had not lasted long before Harry realized what he was doing and stopped it. Draco knew he would take no permanent damage.
But that was a lapse, a break, in Harry’s resistance to torture. Draco would have preferred him to choose a different test subject, but at least he was wise enough to recognize the break and what it meant.
Harry had fled. Well, there were only a limited number of places he could have gone, and Draco would find him.
The Mark did not work over immense distances; it had never been designed to. Since Draco could compel obedience through it, there was no reason he couldn’t keep his Marked ones next to him if he wanted.
But Draco would find Harry. He would bring him back. And he would master him, and see him crawling at his feet yet.
Harry probably thought they were finished.
I meant all the promises I made to you, Harry. Including the one I made when I said that I would never let you go.
I keep my promises.
The End.
First chapter of the sequel.
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